


Through All the Years, This Is My Home

by katonahottinroof



Category: Rivers of London - Ben Aaronovitch
Genre: Don't copy to another site, Friendship, Gen, No Spoilers, Pre-Canon, Toby is the best dog, Yuletide 2019, no beta we die like men, or very few scattered ones for the first couple of books only, when is a building not just a building? when it's a home
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-16
Updated: 2019-12-16
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:07:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21824149
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/katonahottinroof/pseuds/katonahottinroof
Summary: At night, when the rest of the staff and most, if not all, of the masters were asleep, Molly would wander the moonlit halls and remember what fresh air felt like on her skin.Of Molly, of Thomas, and of the years they've spent together - and of the Folly, strong and everlasting.
Comments: 15
Kudos: 67
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	Through All the Years, This Is My Home

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Joylee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Joylee/gifts).



> For Joylee, for Yuletide. I hope you enjoy, and I know this isn't quite what you wanted, maybe, but Molly seemed to demand her story pre-Peter's entry to it be told, and so I hope you'll enjoy my wandering words. Happy, peaceful Yuletide to you, and best wishes for 2020.
> 
> Set pre-canon and through into the first book. Have tried to avoid any spoilers from that as much as possible, fingers crossed.

She remembers arriving at the Folly with Inspector Murville, chooses not to remember the before. Remembers that the Inspector had been afraid of her, but that he’d been… kind, in his own way. A gentle hand on her elbow where mortals before him had been grasping and heavy-handed, their eyes and fingers greedy as they’d reached for her.

The Folly was large and well-lit, its staircases spiralling up through the floors and books crammed into every room, it seemed.

Molly, for that was the name she was given, was told to keep her head down and get on with her work. Not to make trouble ‘for the masters’, Mr Burbridge had told her. She dressed neatly every day, and kept her head and her eyes on her work. The Folly was safe, warm and Molly was well-fed. Inspector Murville had visited her every so often, to see how she was getting along, but Molly hadn’t stepped foot outside the doors since she’d entered.

Oh, they’d tried to make her, of course. Tried to send her out on errands at first, but Molly had gripped the doorframes with all her strength, and hissed at Mr Burbridge and the hall boys, her sharp teeth bared when they’d tried to pull her away.

The Inspector had put a stop to that.

The rest of the masters were as varied as the stars in the sky. Most ignored her unless they needed something. A few had wandering eyes or hands… until she flashed a glimpse of her pointed teeth beneath a curled lip.

At night, when the rest of the staff and most, if not all, of the masters were asleep, Molly would wander the moonlit halls and remember what fresh air felt like on her skin. She missed it, missed roaming as she would, but not enough to flaunt herself out there. She knew what – who – was waiting for her, like ice-cold fingers in the dark.

When the solstice hits, Molly takes herself down to her little room in the basement and there, surrounded by the thick, cool stone of the walls, she almost feels safe as the veil between worlds draws thinner.

Life didn’t change all at once when she first became aware of Thomas – the Nightingale, the other young men were already beginning to call him, and Molly kept her head down and her eyes on her work, but she listened and waited. The Inspector’s protégé, possibly. He wasn’t in London a lot, but the Inspector – by then leaning on a sturdy cane, had introduced them.

Molly thinks she might have fallen a little in love with Thomas – as brief as the flicker of a candle it might have been. He’d been the first to look her in the eye with a smile and reach out unhesitatingly to shake her hand. Charming, buttoned up behind starched shirts and neat three-piece suits, but with a certain light behind his eyes. Yes, Molly had liked him immediately. That he talked to her, rather than at or around her only cemented this opinion.

It was Thomas that told her of the Inspector’s death.

He’d pulled her aside, in June of ’31, and Molly remembers almost catching a whiff of heat and sand off him. The Inspector hadn’t come to the Folly for over six months – and even then he’d seemed diminished in some indescribable way. Mortals were so incredibly fragile, so weak and fleeting.

“I promise, I’ll look after you,” Thomas had told her, gaze locked with hers as Molly felt silent tears roll down her cheeks. Strange, she hadn’t cried in years.

Thomas had made a point of writing to her after that, tales of his adventures overseas. The rest of the staff had muttered about it, and Mr Burbridge’s replacement had sniffed disdainfully whenever he saw Molly receive an envelope in the post. She knows what they think of her – what they’d thought of Lizzie, dismissed from service after being caught with one of the young masters. Of Jemima, who’d hidden her growing belly as long as she could before disappearing one night to ‘visit her aunt up North’ and hadn’t been seen or heard from since.

Molly treasures those letters, unfolds the crisp white paper with steady, gentle hands and stores them neatly refolded into their envelopes in her room.

***

And then the War.

Molly doesn’t remember much of the Great War – she’d barely stirred out of the kitchens and the extended basement area in those first few uncertain years – but the Blitz is noticeable when it hits London.

The Folly is fortunate, protected as it is by the decades of charms and spells laid down over the building from foundations to attics, but the shockwaves from occasional shell hitting nearby still reverberate through the walls while the staff take cover in the firing range and the masters are out stalking through the city with their staves, Latin on their tongues and forma ready in their minds, doing what they can. Those of them that are left, that is, while the younger generation have been called up to the Front, everyone from eighteen and fresh from the school all the way up to Thomas’s fellows.

(Thomas was among the first to go – he’d been back barely four months, on furlong from India, when he’d volunteered to fight. Molly misses him, perhaps more than she still misses the old Inspector.)

The list of the recent dead is read out once a week in the staff dining room belowstairs.

Molly waits to hear Thomas’ name, and every week is relieved when she doesn’t.

The young masters come back broken and fewer in number. Some are held in hospitals on or near military bases, only revealed to the staff as they hear murmured gossip from the masters in passing. So many dead, and so few of those remaining choosing to return to the Folly. The older generations seem disillusioned and bitter, the staff decimated – the majority either joined up only to die in the war, or have found other jobs with more freedom outside of domestic service.

Molly’s taken over the cooking and most of the cleaning through the upper floors; the kitchens have steadily become her domain over the years, and as the end of the year creeps closer, 1947 just around the corner, the last remaining member of staff besides herself hands in their notice. It helps that she doesn’t need to sleep, that there are only ten people that still use the Folly as their London bolthole and club.

Thomas transfers up from the school to the Folly-proper after his extended convalescence, and Molly meets him at the front door, scooping his battered kitbag off of him while smoothly stepping into his side so he can lean on her arm as she makes her slow way across the hall and to the foot of the great staircase.

“It’s good to be back,” Thomas says quietly, his steps echoing in the empty hall while Molly moves soundlessly as usual. She pauses in her steps, turns her head to stare at him. Thomas’ mouth twists in a wry grin. “It’s… acceptable to be back?”

Molly huffs her satisfaction and leads him on.

***

One by one, the other masters leave. Men seem to come into London solely to give their apologies to Thomas, some of them calm, some pale and shaking, some bellowing their pain and anger. Thomas takes it all, standing straight-backed and as solid as a rock at the foot of the main stairs while Molly stands silently by, always watching. There are men that blame Thomas in their anger; there are men that babble confused, rambling thanks at him as well. Always, Molly stands by him.

But this is what Molly forgets. Thomas came back from the war bruised but unbroken. He rejoins the Metropolitan Police, assists on cases, destroys a vampire nest or two. Molly feeds him and cleans for him and soon it’s just the two of them left rattling around in the large and empty Folly by themselves.

The seasons change, the years pass, and Thomas’ hair greys steadily over the years, wrinkles deepening and his steps slowing.

Because this is what Molly has forgotten, or has chosen to forget. Mortal men age and mortals die and only Molly will be left behind. She wanders the halls at night and more often than not finds herself outside Thomas’ bedroom door, hand pressed flat against it as she strains to catch his breathing.

Thomas is sixty-six. Thomas is the last wizard in Great Britain. Thomas is a veteran of a World War, the infamous Nightingale, an Inspector in the Metropolitan Police.

Thomas is Molly’s friend, her first and only friend (that she can remember, back to Inspector Murville reaching out a gentle hand and pulling Molly away from the fear that had been all she’d known for so long.)

Thomas is Molly’s only friend, and she’s losing him to old age.

***

He gets cold easily, now. She keeps the fire banked high in the mundane library where Thomas likes to sit and read in the evenings, a blanket close by that Molly will lay over his lap when he inevitably dozes off.

He promises that she’ll be taken care of when he… afterwards. He’s always promised to take care of her.

Thomas has reached out tentative feelers, but both of them can feel that magic’s getting weaker, that the world (or at least this particular city) will be turned over to the likes of Mama Thames and her daughters. Thomas confesses that he’s fine with that on one long, dark, winter’s evening. Molly’s been persuaded to take a seat with Thomas by the fire but, in deference to her position, she's brought a ripped curtain with her to mend with neat little stitches while Thomas has a book open in his lap that he ignores in favour of staring into the flames.

***

It takes a couple of years before either of them realise what’s happened. She enters the library on silent feet to find Thomas seated behind a table and staring down at what she realises are photographs as she draws closer. Some event over five years ago, now – a ball or gala. Something with glitz and the very wealthy feting themselves. Thomas had been there, but Molly remembers he’d returned home earlier than she’d expected, leaning heavily on his silver-topped cane.

The Thomas in front of her looks different from the Thomas of five years past. She frowns as her eyes flick between the printed Thomas and the man in front of her. He’s twisted in his seat, ignoring the photographs to stare up at her and allow her to examine his face. There’s more colour in the hair at his temples, the skin at the corners of his eyes is a little smoother.

“Precisely,” Thomas murmurs, and she meets his eyes, quirks an eyebrow up in question. “I genuinely have no idea.” He grins, then – a little-boy grin full of mischief. “But isn’t it interesting, though?” He gets to his feet – how had she not noticed how much more smoothly he was moving? – and moves to the door. Molly takes a moment to sweep the photographs into a neat pile and back into the box Thomas had pulled them out from before following.

“We’ll need,” Thomas muses on their way down the main staircase, “to develop a relationship with one of the hospitals, I think.” Molly helps him on with his coat, hands gentle as she smoothes down the lapels and hands Thomas his hat. “University College Hospital, maybe, or St Mary’s.”

He flicks out of the Folly’s main door, promising to be back for dinner, and leaves Molly standing in the empty hall, her mind racing.

***

Dr Walid seems like a thoroughly sensible man. He speaks with a rolling Scottish brogue, the accent soft to Molly’s ears. He is also, she quickly finds, not at all afraid of standing on ceremony when he believes Thomas is preparing to take what he believes to be an unnecessary risk. Molly finds she’s usually inclined to agree.

It takes her a while to adjust her cooking to accommodate him – at first she thought he was a vegetarian (they’d had a few of those, among the masters, back in the early 1920s when Buttner’s theories were all the rage), and serves mainly vegetarian dishes when Thomas lets her know Dr Walid will be staying on the odd occasion that the two men talk into the evening. However, he won’t even touch some of those dishes although she knows she’s been so very careful in her preperations, so in desperation she reaches out a hand as he leaves one evening, doing her best to ignore his flinch at the unexpected touch. Dr Walid is a kind man, but Molly knows what her teeth look like and Dr Walid, for all his open-mindedness, did not grow up aware of the demi-monde as Thomas had.

She proffers a small book, thin, that she’d found in the mundane library, and that she’s been finding most of her vegetarian recipes. He’s smart, it only takes him a second before his slight frown smoothes.

“Ah, no, lass. I’m no’ a vegetarian, but it’s sweet of you to care enough. I’m Muslim,” he explains, and Molly is confused. Back when the Folly had been more populated, before the war, there had been guests at the table at times, although all the masters without exception had fallen into a particular type. There had been a couple of men who had dined frequently – from Mesopotamia in, Molly recalls, perhaps 1919? Maybe 1920? She remembers the cooks commenting on them below stairs, but mostly she remembers seeing them in the dining hall, and she doesn’t think they resembled Dr Walid, with his pale Scottish skin and red hair, at all.

“I converted,” he tells her, and Dr Walid goes on to try to sum up conversion from one religion to another, a potted summary and history of both, but it’s information that Molly decides to think about later. In her opinion, mortals can be rather silly about religion and the imagined barriers between them all.

Dr Walid is kind – gentle when she allows him to examine her, and he’s turning into a true friend for Thomas. Molly likes Dr Walid, even if she still doesn’t understand mortals, so she nudges the cookbook at the man again, and he glances at it, then back at her. “I can… bring some information, some books, if you’d like?”

Molly nods, smiles and remembers to keep her lips pressed together. She likes Dr Walid and doesn’t want to scare him more than necessary.

After that, Molly sets to mastering halal cooking with determination, and is rewarded with the satisfaction of clearing Dr Walid’s scraped-clean plate after dinner.

***

Life in the Folly is an endless routine of cleaning and cooking and making sure that Thomas doesn’t injure himself again (and patching him up when he does.) Beside Dr Walid and Mr Caffrey, people simply just don’t enter the Folly.

…Which is why it comes as a complete surprise when Thomas asks her to make up another room. An apprentice, he tells her, although they both know that there hasn’t been one for decades. Molly’s not sure how she feels about that, and her opinion of the matter doesn’t improve much when she finally meets Peter. He’s tall and young – although not as young as Molly believed Thomas’ type of wizards usually were when they started learning.

Peter’s youth is more a naivety in his character. He just seems so positive, at times, and Molly knows what this world, that Thomas stands with one foot in, will do to a man. She’s not entirely sure she approves of Thomas dragging in an innocent with no knowledge or history about the world he’s going to find himself enmeshed in.

He’s polite and respectful, though – keeps out of what she considers to be her domain and tidies up after himself. He also makes Thomas smile – really smile, in the way that Molly’s rarely sees anymore.

She lurks in the doorway of the basement range and the labs as Thomas teaches Peter the forma that he’ll eventually need for his spells and she delights as she watches Thomas create a ball of light. She’s always loved watching Thomas work magic.

With Peter comes, eventually, Toby.

Molly’s not sure of the dog, at first, but he grows on her. It amuses her to see him snap at people many times his size, like he thinks he could really take them on in a fight and win. Peter’s so-called ‘tech cave’ is a wonder and a miracle – Molly’s used to corresponding with people that she meets in the letters pages of her various periodicals, but this is something new and huge and so varied that Molly can scarcely comprehend it. Then there’s the noise, the constant little noises and movements of another person rattling around the building with them – it feels like the Folly’s waking up, as if the building had fallen asleep as magic faded and rooms were shut off, abandoned with their furniture covered in dust sheets. This – Peter’s youth and energy and endless interesting questions – makes it feel like the Folly’s breathing again.

For that, and for Thomas’s indulgent smile as he explains a new forma or allows Peter to take them off on a tangent when he should have been studying his Latin grammar… Molly is prepared to put up with a lot from Peter and finds she may, perhaps, even grow to like him one day.

It is fun to watch him startle into sudden alertness in the middle of the night when she goes to fetch him for a phone call (and wakes him by standing over his bed) though.

***

The Folly is Molly’s home. The Folly has Thomas and Dr Walid and now Peter and Toby. The Folly is hers, as its people are hers, and while Thomas lies in a hospital bed out of her reach and Peter comes to her to beg her help and skills with haemomancy, Molly realises that she’d do anything to keep them safe.

The Folly is Molly’s home for nearly a hundred years now, this old, stone- and brick-built building that once thronged with life. The Folly remembers the people that moved through it, as Molly remembers them, and while time passes them by, Molly and the building both, they both remain as if at the centre of a whirlpool.

The Folly is Molly’s home, for strength comes with repetition in threes, and Molly leans forward to sink her teeth into Peter’s neck, his blood spilling hot and metallic over her tongue.


End file.
